For example, Olbermann loves being on television so much (and messing with adversary Fox) that he asks Carr to change positions at the Yankees game.

"Switch seats with me,” he said pleasantly. “I want to be in the Fox Sports shot of home plate. They usually cut it off right here," he said, indicating the arm of the seat between us. "It’s fun to mess with them."

Carr also finds out why Olbermann left MSNBC, revealing that the host frequently said he was not going to come into work because he felt slighted by a comment made "at his own station or in the press." It would take the wooing of executives to "talk him off the ledge."

"Night after night, there would be this huge struggle just to talk him into sitting in the chair," said one longtime executive at NBC, who asked not to be named because of the nondisclosure agreement. "It was such a grind and so pointless. Once he sat down, everything was fine, great even, because he is so talented. But after eight years, people just decided, ‘Enough.'"

The Times scribe seems to think Olbermann's arrangement at Current TV will work because the host has plenty of control.

"One way they plan on addressing his habit of chewing out his bosses is to make him a boss," Carr writes. "He has the title of chief news officer and has made every hire for the new show."